Minnesota Twins Talk

I was thinking the other day... Do the Twins have anyone on their current roster that can help recruit a 2019 free agent? Last year I know Jonathan Schoop was instrumental in bringing Nelson Cruz to Minnesota. I wonder which connections the Twins front office can leverage to help sign players this offseason. Here are a few I found when doing some research today: - Zach Wheeler and Jake Odorizzi were teammates on the 2012 USA Futures Team. - Thad Levine was the Assitant GM on the Rangers that traded for Cole Hamels in 2015. - Gerrit Cole and Marwin Gonzalez were teammates on the Astros in 2018. - Josh Donaldson follows Special Assistant of Baseball Operations, …

In constructing my blueprint, I tried to blend my own style with that of the current management, which seems to 1) seek out value; 2) stay away from long-term commitments; and 3) not spend a disproportionate amount on any one player. I also like to go with known quantities and maximize flexibility. All that said, here’s your starting lineup for your 2020 World Champion Minnesota Twins (at least for eight or so random games scattered throughout the season as Rocco keeps playing Roster of the Day, but you get the picture): 2B: Luis Arraez (0.6) (L) SS: Jorge Polanco (4.0) (S) DH: Nelson Cruz (12.0) ® RF: Max Kepler (6.3) (L) 3B: Miguel Sano (5.5) ® LF: Eddie Rosario (8.…

Next seasons market appears better for him and no draft strings attached.

As Expected, Astros DH Yordan Alvarez was the unanimous choice for AL Rookie of the Year, ahead of O's LHP John Means and Rays second baseman Brandon Lowe. Luis Arraez received a 2nd place vote and two 3rd place votes and finished sixth. Eloy Jimenez finished fourth and Cavan Biggio finished 5th. Mets 1B Pete Alonso was one vote shy of a unanimous win in the National League.

The Star-Tribune has learned that the Twins have agreed to terms to keep CBO Derek Falvey and GM Thad Levine at the top of the Twins Baseball Operations group through the 2024 season. Terms of the deal not available at this time. http://www.startribune.com/twins-give-derek-falvey-thad-levine-contracts-through-2024/564868492/

He could be another buy low candidate that could be 2020's version of the Martin Perez signing. Health has been an issue with him for the last few years. Maybe turning him into an 8th inning type of guy or even a closer could be the right way to turn his career around. Also can motivate him to face Cleveland that probably over used him and slowed if not ended his career.

Gleeman on The Athletic ranked the top 20 Free Agent Pitchers. Odorizzi at 6 (behind Hyun-Jin Ryu, Age 33) Pineda at 8 and Gibson at 13. Granted, that's his take, but that doesn't leave much to improve with what is potentially in-house. I just don't see a Cole/Straussberg/Bumgardner in our price range. Is Wheeler our best bet?

We'll see if he gets it, but the Twins could potentially lose another coach to another big league team. Jeremy Hefner is currently the assistant pitching coach of the Twins under Wes Johnson. He would be the pitching coach for the Mets, if he were to get the job. He'd also get to work with some pretty good pitchers.

The Reds have been open to trading him the last couple of seasons. In 2017/2018 it was more of needing to be "blown away" by an offer to do it. Last year the window was open again at the trade deadline, but no one bit. Perhaps now is the time to think about buying low on him. He's coming off his worst season of his career, but set a career best in K rate. HRs did him in last year. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/i/iglesra01.shtml He has 2 years of control left at $9 million for 2020, $9.125 million in 2021. Given that there will be competition for Will Smith, and draft compensation tied to his signing, perhaps going the trade route is better to find …

According to LaVelle Neal and the Star Tribune, the Twins have outrighted RH RP Sam Dyson. http://www.startribune.com/sam-dyson-declines-minor-league-assignment-from-twins-becomes-free-agent/564260612/ Dyson rejected a minor league assignment and became a free agent. He had shoulder surgery in late September and is likely to miss the 2020 season. The Twins made the move early. He was eligible to be offered a fourth season of arbitration. The Twins would have been non-tendered at that time.

Darren Wolfson learned that the Twins will play the $500,000 buyout on Martin Perez's option instead of paying him $7.5 million. https://twitter.com/DWolfsonKSTP/status/1191460065909334022

Fangraphs has posted their 2020 Free Agent Rankings, including contracts projected by Kiley McDaniel and the "crowdsource" (FG readers). For the Gibson haters, he's ranked 15th and is expected to get a 2-3 year contract. Odo is ranked 17th and Pineda 20th. For the Wheeler lovers, the contract looks reasonable at 4/$68-$72M. I'd take that in a heartbeat. Also, today is the deadline for issuing Qualifying Offers, per MLBTradeRumors. Their offseason calendar is located here.

From Rotoworld.com... The Twins are expected to issue a one-year, $17.8 million qualifying offer to right-hander Jake Odorizzi, according to Jim Duquette of MLB Network Radio on Sirius XM. It doesn't come as a surprise, but Odorizzi has a decision to make as he stares free agency in the face. The qualifying offer tag could make a real impact on his market. It's possible Odorizzi returns to the Twins, if not by accepting the qualifying offer, but on a multi-year deal with a lower AAV. Odorizzi, 29, is coming off a strong year in which he posted a 3.51 ERA and 178/53 K/BB ratio over 159 innings. SOURCE: Jim Duquette on Twitter Nov 4, 2019, 3:28 PM ET

Just got this email with these odds courtesy of BetOnline.com. Twins are not on the board for these big three.... Gerrit Cole Game 1 2020 Los Angeles Angels 2/1 New York Yankees 3/1 Houston Astros 7/2 Los Angeles Dodgers 5/1 Philadelphia Phillies 15/2 San Diego Padres 15/2 Stephen Strasburg Game 1 2020 Washington Nationals 5/4 New York Yankees 3/1 Boston Red Sox 5/1 Los Angeles Angels 7/1 Philadelphia Phillies 7/1 …

What moment from the Twins 10-year run (yes, it's been that long) stand out to you. You don't need to be too specific. Just off the top of your head, which moment stand out? My memory is just so terrible. Off the top of my head, I have.... - First game at Target Field - The Jim Thome home run on Labor Day. - Clinching the 2010 AL Central game. - First two postseason games at Target Field in 2010 (but they lost them both). - Thome's 6ooth home run game. - I remember the first game of the last weekend of 2015, when against all odds they had a chance to steal a wild card and played the Royals. - I remember Kyle Gibson's debut game. It was just such a terrible season, and t…

When the Boston Red Sox fired Dave Dombrowski, there was some chatter that the organization could target the Twins' Derek Falvey, who grew up in Red Sox Nation and might find the challenge of running his childhood team appealing. The Red Sox announced they hired Chaim Bloom away from the Rays but it sounds like they had inquired about interviewing Falvey. According to the Star Tribune's Lavelle Neal, Falvey said nah. The Twins are experiencing some coaching harvesting -- first Pete Fatse to the Red Sox and then James Rowson to the Marlins -- and that's a good sign. Even better, Falvey remains on to backfill and target more of these high caliber, high quality coac…

With the end of the World Series looming so is the annual 40 man roster moves to protect prospects from the Rule 5 draft, the official start of free agency and lots of anticipated and talked about possible transactions. Today came the first actual transactions in preparation with the DFA’s of Torreyes, Miller, and LaMarre: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2019/10/twins-outright-three-players.html I don’t think any of these are surprising but let’s take a moment to thank them for their contributions. Thank you gentlemen. So what’s next? Who will be added and protected in the next 3-5 days and who will not be added? Here’s a new thread to discuss what actually goes down…

I am curious how or why do you think the Twins hit 141 more homers than last? A couple players were not even Homerun hitters. Cruz was, but, is now old so a good signing. Playing 40+ games against teams that lost 100 had to factor in for sure.

Something I thought would be fun as the season is winding down and the Hot Stove League is weeks away. We have no idea if the Twins 2020 roster will be influenced by major trades or major and minor additions. But one thing I have always found to be great fun is just projecting the future based on what is on hand. We've all done it! Whether online at TD or paper, we have all written talked, speculated on what we'd like to see and proposed what could be. So we are speaking about the next 2-4 years, to keep it real and relevant. I think this could be fun..,hope you agree..and hope you will play along. This is NOT about a 6yr contract to so and so. It's about speculatio…

Nothing too surprising here. They have the Twins nabbing Jose Iglases as a stop gap to Lewis and Wade Miley to fill into the rotation. Both make some sort of sense as low budget moves. Iglesias is a very good defender but would suggest a defensive arrangement of either Cron/Polanco/Iglesias/Sano with Arreaz squeezed out or we don't resign Cron and go with Sano/Polanco/Iglesias/Arreaz. Or, possibly, Iglesias is signed to more of an Adrianza role but I'm not sure he'd do that. They have Gibby going to KC, Romo back to Miami, Odorizzi going to Milwaukee, Schoop to Cleveland and Pineda going to Houston. I think of those guys, we're most likely to bring back Pineda or Romo…

At the deadline, it was reported that the Mets asked for Byron Buxton (plus more players) for Noah Syndergaard. With the Twins are least calling teams about trading for high impact starters, I wonder who we think is the more valuable asset for a team looking for a centerfielder: Byron Buxton or Max Kepler? I'd like the community's analysis on two things: 1) Which do you think is more valuable to other teams? (Especially to teams looking for a centerfielder.) 2) Which would you want to hang onto? Here's the high-level analysis: Buxton - 827 OPS (10 HR, .262 BA, 19 BB, 68 K) but only played in 87 games - saves about 15 runs per year in CF per UZR metric - under team c…

The Twins Trade: Byron Buxton, Royce Lewis, and Alex Kiriloff The Twins Receive: Mike Trout and Albert Pujols Why the Angels do it--they get out from under $66M in salary this year, and $67M next year. If they use that space to sign Cole and Rendon, they can add 15-20 WAR to the 2020 team (when Buxton is included), while only giving up 8-10 WAR, and all for about the same cost. Not to mention they catapult their farm system into the top 5, with 3 near MLB ready hitters. Why the Angels don't do it--they give up the franchise icon, who may be the best player in baseball history, at the height of his powers. Why the Twins do it--the 101 win 2019 team loses less…

I was researching John Castino for my Twins Birthdays twitter account. Found this article from 6-7 years ago from Patch, a newspaper in Illinois. https://patch.com/illinois/winnetka/part-one-new-trier-alumni-in-the-same-game-again Interesting look back at Castino's post-career and getting into the financial world, and it appears he is doing quite well.

Twins Hall of Famer Michael Cuddyer has been doing a periodic video for USA Baseball. http://sportdev.org/USAB/Blog/The_Opportunity_to_Put_On_a_Uniform.aspx He played for Team USA back before being drafted.

https://theathletic.com/1315487/2019/10/23/twins-top-15-most-valuable-players-long-term-ranking-polanco-kepler-lewis-kirilloff-buxton/ (subscription required) Today, Aaron Gleeman posted his Top 15 most valuable Twins players for the long-term. I love discussions like this because it's not just about now but about the future. It's not a 2019 MVP vote. It's not a prospect list. Here's a quick excerpt. I'm not going to post the list since it is behind the paywall of The Athletic. But I think the topic is worth discussion. Based on years of team control, contract status, talent, position in more, how would you rank players?

Per his Instagram (via Doogie Wolfson), CJ Cron had successful thumb surgery... Now on to rehab. Certainly wish him well.

I've been having this discussion in my email, so I might as well throw it out to the group of learned Twins fans: At the trade deadline, there we talks about Noah Syndergaard. Instead, the Mets traded for Stroman, went on a tear, and won 86 games, being the top team in the NL to NOT make the postseason. They look like they're more ready to add than subtract this offseason, though they still have some pretty expensive players on the books, and I'm not sure what their payroll situation is. Here is their baseball-reference page. The only real weakness in the lineup is in CF, which explains the Buxton rumors. Here is their Cot's contract page. I notice Todd Frazier is…

I know some of you may have scuffled with them a bit but the reason you're still here - and the reason Twins Daily exists, period - is because the moderators have held a steady hand this entire season. While it's easy to take one of their decisions personally - trust me, as an owner, I've been chastised by them myself - realize that there is a reason that literally every other baseball forum you've been around has either been: 1) A hot mess 2) No longer exists 3) Probably both 1 & 2 The reason we're still here is because of the moderator crew, full stop. And it's high time we applaud them for once instead of ridiculing them. So here's to the moderator cr…

Make it rain up in here, Derek. http://www.startribune.com/twins-thinking-aggressively-when-assessing-roster-needs-free-agent-market/562665252/

Which TD member is going to step up and wear the costume? Squirrel? Chief? North?